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The Cresset, a journal of commentary on literature, the arts, and public affairs, explores ideas and trends in contemporary culture from a perspective grounded in the Lutheran tradition of scholarship, freedom, and faith while informed by the wisdom of the broader Christian community.

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It
is becoming ever more difficult to ­recognize a historic election
when we see one. The midterm elections of 2006 appeared to be a massive
repudiation of George W. Bush and the Republican Party. In 2008 many observers
thought that President Obama’s election had ushered in a new era of Democratic
dominance and reduced Republicans to a regional party of the South. And now, a
mere two years later, Obama and the Democrats have suffered their own
remarkable “shellacking,” as the President rightly termed it. Democrats managed
to retain a slim majority in the Senate thanks to a handful of weak GOP
candidates, but their losses in the House constituted what reporters on
election evening described as an unfolding bloodbath.

Little
wonder that commentators have struggled to discern the “meaning” of this
election. Was it a decisive Democratic smack down? Or merely a tempting
opportunity for Republicans to imitate Democratic hubris in turn? A return to
the generally conservative status quo ante? Or just a symptom of
ungovernability? A call for sharply limited government? Or for government to do
more in support of the middle class?

If you
were hoping for answers to these questions, I’m afraid I’m going to disappoint
you. As we sort through the election’s aftermath, however, perhaps we can
discern some general trends. Here are what seem to me three of its lessons:

1.
Voter Volatility. We seem to have entered upon a period of extreme electoral
volatility, with voters switching back and forth from one party to the other
with extraordinary rapidity and magnitude. These are not so much “swing” voters
as lunging, thrashing, wildly flailing voters. Charles Krauthammer argued in a
post-election column that the country, after a brief pro-Democratic, pro-Obama
aberration in 2006 and 2008, has merely reverted to its moderately conservative
norm. Much though I respect Krauthammer, I think he is mistaken about this. The
volatility we are witnessing is more extreme and enduring than his description
suggests.

Obama,
after all, is not the only recent president to suffer from significant swings
in popularity or to see his party’s fortunes change dramatically. George W.
Bush entered office under a cloud of illegitimacy, but then became tremendously
popular after 9/11 and coasted to a relatively comfortable re-election victory.
During his second term, however, his popularity plummeted and his party was
punished in Congress. Before him, Bill Clinton—like Obama—saw his approval
ratings collapse rapidly and his congressional majority vanish. He was able to
pivot quickly and recover popularity, but his second term was clouded by
scandal and impeachment, and his heir apparent, Vice-President Gore, failed to
win election. Even Bush the Elder endured similar swings: immensely popular
after the Gulf War, he nevertheless served only a single term when voters
turned on him in response to his broken “no new taxes” pledge. Not since Reagan
has a president served two full terms with his party’s and his own popularity
more or less intact.

Throughout
this period, however, the electoral swings seem to be becoming more frequent and
more dramatic. Since no party can expect to solve our political and economic
problems or accomplish much of lasting significance in a mere two years, this
poses genuine dilemmas of governability.

2.
Independent Uprising. Connected to this increased volatility, and partly
helping to explain it, is a clear and steady increase in the number of
independent voters, affiliated with neither party. The increase in independents
only “partly” explains the volatility, I say, because there is no inherent
reason why independent voters should swing wildly back and forth. One could
readily imagine a large group of people who feel no strong partisan affiliation
and are thus nominally independent, but whose views nevertheless tend with some
consistency toward one party or the other. Indeed, one might expect this to be
a fairly natural stance for many people. It is not our situation, however.
Rather, the rising number of independent voters appears to be a symptom of a
more general decline in the strength of our traditional two-party system.

Many
factors have no doubt contributed to this gradual decline, which is not itself
a new phenomenon. The widespread adoption of presidential primaries—which
allowed candidates to be, in effect, self-selecting—is one critical source of party
weakness. The growth of a twenty-four-hour media culture is no doubt another
contributor to our candidate-centered politics. Whatever its immediate causes,
party weakness has created serious problems for our political system.
Commentators frequently decry the increased polarization of American politics.
And the increase in independent voters, along with the very low approval
ratings for both parties, suggests that citizens themselves increasingly view
parties with distaste. Ironically, however, polarization is probably the result
of party weakness, rather than party strength. As parties’ political role and
influence decline, voters with low partisan identification tend to drop away.
The parties are thus left with only the more committed partisans as members.
Naturally, polarization results. Stronger parties would, of necessity, be
broader parties.

Like
electoral volatility, the rise in independents and decline of traditional
parties are problems. There is little reason to expect that a country as large
and diverse as ours, with the American system of separation of powers, can
effectively be governed without the unifying and moderating influence of a
functioning two-party system. Yet it is difficult to see how parties could
successfully be strengthened given current levels of voter disdain. Republicans
may have woken up on November 3 dreaming of a new, solidified electoral
majority. But Democrats thought they had achieved precisely that in the 2008
elections, and GOP hopes are likely to prove equally illusory.

3. The
New People’s Party. The decline in parties has been going on for some time now.
Increasing electoral volatility is more recent and has only reached its current
extremes in the past decade. More important and interesting than either of
these, however, is a trend that has probably been underway since Reagan’s
election, but that is only now, I think, becoming truly visible: our two
parties are in the process of reversing identities. At least since the time of
FDR, the Democratic Party has been America’s version of a populist party, with
its electoral base rooted in labor and the working class. The Republicans, by
contrast, were the party of big business and of the elites. We are watching a
role reversal take place: the GOP is becoming our new populist party, while the
Democrats are becoming a party of elites.

The
so-called “Reagan Democrats” may have been the first harbinger of this change;
the Tea Party is its most recent manifestation. But over the past two decades,
Democrats have increasingly identified with a range of causes attractive to
educated elites but with little resonance on Main Street: multiculturalism,
environmentalism, cosmopolitanism, secularism, gay rights, global warming,
immigrant rights, and the increasingly complex regulation of our increasingly
complex national and global economy. This agenda has little appeal for most
middle- and working-class, mainstream Americans. They are concerned with jobs,
small business opportunities, safe and decent communities, declining K–12
education; they value faith and family, patriotism and military service. As
became clear with the election of Obama, Democrats have become more successful
at drawing support away from Republicans among elites, including business
elites. But this process has been distancing them from their historic base, and
Republicans have increasingly filled the void.

The
financial crisis is providing an additional catalyst to voters’ changing
identifications. As in democratic countries across the West, American
citizens—ordinary, middle-class voters—are realizing that the welfare state
model is increasingly unsustainable, that its economic viability rested upon a
temporary demographic bulge, and that we can no longer afford large-scale
entitlement programs. As a result, the basis for old-style economic populism is
vanishing, while in its place a new form of populism is emerging—a cultural
populism, one suited to the age of identity politics, and compatible (unlike
the old, economic populism) with limited-government conservatism. In this
world, the populist party will be the GOP, while the Democrats will be the
party of Kyoto and Davos. Note that this is not a prediction of Republican
dominance. A nation like America has plenty of educated elites, who vote more
and have more money and influence than do the middle and working classes.
Democrats will continue to be competitive, just as Republicans were when
Democrats were the populists. I am merely claiming that we are witnessing a
historic shift in the identity and electoral base of our two major parties.
Perhaps the extreme volatility we have been witnessing is even a sign of this,
the consequence of an electoral re-sorting that has not yet worked itself out,
as a large number of voters find themselves torn between the party of their historic
allegiance and the one that increasingly represents them today.

There is, I admit, a
certain tension between the second and third trends I have described above.
Does it make sense to think both that the rise in independents signals a
general decline in parties, and also that the parties are in the process of
changing identities? To be sure, these are not mutually exclusive
possibilities—the parties could reverse roles and still remain weak.
Nevertheless, the process of role reversal suggests a certain vitality in the
party system that is belied by the rise of independents.

It
could be, of course, that voters have moved out of parties in which they no
longer feel represented without yet re-identifying with the opposite party,
especially since the shift in party identity has been a gradual process and is
not yet complete. This hypothesis would fit with the suggestion that electoral
volatility may itself be a symptom of partisan re-sorting. In that case, we
might expect the number of independent voters to decline somewhat as modified
party identities gradually crystallize again. I don’t necessarily expect this
to happen, since I believe that other factors have also contributed to party
decline. But it is an intriguing possibility.

Perhaps
the best way to think about the changing shape of American party politics is as
a race between party decline and party realignment. If party decline is one
possible outcome of independent voter discontent, party redefinition is
another. It would not be the first time in American history that our party
system has changed in response to electoral pressure. Will Republicans and
Democrats revitalize themselves along somewhat different electoral bases,
drawing discontented voters back into their respective folds? Or will they
remain stuck halfway between the old, Democratic-populist alignment and the
new, Republican-populist one, losing old voters without attracting new ones and
watching the electorate continue to pivot back and forth between two options
that take turns demonstrating their unattractiveness to large voter coalitions?
The shape of the next decades of American politics may well turn on whether our
parties complete this process of identity swapping before voters lose patience
with them altogether.

Peter Meilaender is
Associate Professor of Political Science at Houghton College.